Ozzy Osbourne – A Reflection

By BRIAN GIFFIN

IT’S five days since Ozzy Osbourne left this world and it’s only now I can collect my thoughts and feelings enough to compose my reflections on his importance. 

We’ve all lost icons and heroes before – by the time you reach your fifties, it has long become a regular occurrence – but the passing of Ozzy felt like a seismic shift. This was just different.

Everyone knew who Ozzy Osbourne was: elderly people, very young people, people who knew nothing of his music besides a song or two. His name and image had become a part of our cultural framework. 

Much of that had come about from his TV career with The Osbournes, his family’s chaotic and strangely compelling reality show on which he played the role as a shuffling, kind-hearted and bewildered buffoon to his dominating wife and over-bearing, loud children. He was both acting and being himself. When he protested that he was the Prince Of Darkness as he tottered around cleaning up after his family’s dogs, he did so with a shrewd sense of deep irony, and he became a true household name, revitalised his music career and made him a hero to a world of new fans.

Yet for many of us, Ozzy was already a hero, the recognisable face and voice of the original Black Sabbath, the band who rose above the drudgery of their industrial wasteland hometown to lay the foundations of rock music’s greatest and most wildly diverse genre – heavy metal. And like all truly great bands, their influence transcended music. They were loathed by the critical elite. Robert Christgau thought they were garbage. Lester Bangs wrote that their debut was “like Cream, but worse.” Religious leaders hated and feared them. But the fans got it, because Black Sabbath was a band for the fans. They were true counter-culture warriors. Their music was fear, frustration, desolation and misery. Their songs were about the horrors of war and the tormented lives of those who fight them, environmental degradation, the threat of nuclear destruction, the discontent and struggle of regular people, the very morbidity of depression itself, escaping pain through drugs. Front and centre of it all was Ozzy, his weird, untrained, haunting warble adding a further layer of desolation to the band’s dark, nihilistic songs while he threw peace signs, cried “We love you!” at every opportunity and delivered a positive energy completely at odds with Sabbath’s gloom. 

That was what his fans loved about Ozzy – the joy and love he brought to his audience. He always looked genuinely happy to be in front of us, sharing that love, inviting us all to the huge joke he was having at the expense of the haters and those who just didn’t get it. A guy from the rough streets of Birmingham who lucked into fronting one of the most significant bands of all time, who wanted love and wanted to share it, who let us know it was OK to be angry, depressed and miserable but also to be happy. With his death, he also allowed us to be sad. 

The outpouring of grief and sorrow at his loss was staggering. People I have known for decades whom I have barely known to show an emotion were openly admitting to crying their eyes out. My social feeds were literally full of nothing but love and tributes – something I haven’t seen since the equally remarkable David Bowie left this world – and still are, days later. Ozzy’s death was a truly visceral moment, because his life and what he shared with us meant so much. 

He was far from perfect. There were regrettable episodes and business decisions that hurt people. As we all are, he was flawed. But he was also capable of breathtaking generosity. During the eighties he donated to AIDS campaigns and his final act to raise more money than Live Aid and FarmAid put together to help people in his home neighbourhood was a last, sweeping gesture of grand benevolence. It was very much a part of what we loved about Ozzy, and something that we are all going to miss in our dark times. Yet his music, his legacy and his love will continue to resonate through the world he influenced in so many ways.

Ozzy Osbourne – a true giant among humans. He will be long remembered and loved.